Preventing Behaviour Problems

I was listening to an audio book recently that was written in the late 1800s, and in one scene, the kids of the town got all excited because of the colourful handbills that appeared advertising a circus coming to town. Now, I am not keen on circuses, however in that era they were rare and exciting events, and when the handbills started to appear, the information spread throughout the town like a wild fire. Everyone talked about it for days. The first clue that a circus might be coming in fact happened long before the handbills were posted. The first hint of a circus was when a character from another town arrived in town and mentioned that he had seen the circus several days earlier packing up to get on rail cars in a distant town. The rumour mill went wild! Next came a letter from a friend in a town a little closer talking ab out plans to attend the circus that was coming to their town. In fact all through the book that was not about circuses at all were mentions here and there, whispers, rumours and hints about the circus coming to town. This was such an exciting event for the characters in the book, that it was mentioned over and over again, and there was an escalating tension that the circus was coming to town!

In years gone by, the circus was an amazing and unusual spectacle. When the circus came to your town, you might write a letter to tell someone up the tracks that the circus was coming. These rumours allowed people to prepare for a big upcoming event.

When I walk into my training school, I am super sensitive to the expressions on the dog’s faces. There is Fido, looking regal if a little worried in puppy class. Is someone going to grab him and scare him? He is a little worried about strange men and sometimes John the Puppy Guy is a little scary to him. And Fluffy. Fluffy is a happy go luck soul who is never phased by anything. She is loose and floppy all over and you could pick her up and open her mouth and look in her ears and she would still be loose and floppy and happy all over. I see Ralph. Ralph is an instructor favourite; he is mischievous and silly and always looking for an opportunity to pull a prank like untying shoelaces or finding the ONLY treat left in your pocket…from the outside in. I see the dogs and their facial expressions are sort of like the rumours of the circus coming to town. I don’t need Fido or Fluffy or Ralph to be extreme to know how they are going to react. I hear the rumours and I know a little bit about what is coming up without having to go into more detail.

Contrast this with my students. Fido’s family is constantly surprised that Fido is afraid. Fido cannot give them a rumour of how he feels. Fido has to hire a neon sign, send them emails and then get a brass band before his family recognizes the signs. By the time that Fido’s family is aware of his fear, he is over threshold and may have peed on the rug. They don’t hear the rumours of what Fido has to say, so they cannot respond to what he needs in time to head off a problem.

I have been working professionally with dogs for over 25 years, and at first, I didn’t hear the rumours either. In fact, I could be downright cruel in my insistence that my canine partner was “fine”. The fact is that the majority of dogs I knew were more like Fluffy than like Fido. They never put up handbills announcing that the circus was in town because they didn’t need to. They weren’t that concerned about things. They weren’t going to produce a circus at any moment. Fluffy doesn’t give off a whole lot of subtle signals because for the most part, Fluffy is happy go lucky and either doesn’t care about the things that concern Fido.

And what about Ralph? Ralph’s people are just plain fed up! Yesterday Ralph climbed on the dining room table, grabbed a plastic bottle of ketchup, and ran through the house with it. No one noticed him initially, but eventually he punctured the bottle and left dots of ketchup on the rugs throughout the house everywhere that he dropped the bottle. He settled down in an upstairs bedroom and completely decimated the bottle, leaving bits of plastic all over the room, accented with streaks of ketchup on the bed, the desk, the chair, the dresser, up two walls and on the door. Ralph finished his handiwork with pawprints in ketchup down the hall and into the bathroom.

Sometimes puppies will destroy things when they are unsupervised and sometimes they do that when the are distressed. Close supervision and careful attention to the dog’s behaviour will help you to better understand when he is struggling so that you can help him to find a better outlet than the upstairs couch cushions.

Ralph is a bit like Dennis the Menace. Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. He is not intentionally getting into trouble, but his communications are so subtle that his family doesn’t notice that he needs something in time to head off disaster. He is curious and engaged in his world and he has no idea that his behaviour is unwanted or unsafe. The interesting thing is that some of his behaviour, like racing through the house or not settling are rooted in confusion, a lack of training or anxiety. Ralph is unable to ask to go out, so even though he had a good start at toilet training and only toileting outside, his people didn’t notice the rumours of his need, so he had to look somewhere else to go. His first efforts included peeing in front of the family on the rug, but that made the people angry and that frightened Ralph. Ralph bolted because he was frightened, and learned two things. First, he learned not to pee in front of the family and second, he learned that when he was uncertain, anxious or upset, running would relieve that feeling. Some running leads to more running and pretty soon, Ralph was running through the house all the time.

Ralph also learned some other lessons inadvertently. He learned for instance that there are many fun games for puppies if you don’t shout loudly when you are playing. He learned that being in the same room as his family meant that he wasn’t allowed to do these fun things. Things like getting on the dining room table. Ralph learned that he doesn’t need to spread rumours because he can take care of things himself and do all the fun stuff he wants if he doesn’t communicate too much.

In all three cases, the family will have a better relationship with their puppy if they learn a little bit about their dog’s body language. In Fido’s case, he will be less fearful. In Fluffy’s case, the family will become more aware of the big things because they are not usually big things for Fluffy. Taking her needs into account will give them an even bigger world to explore together. And in Ralph’s case life will just be a whole lot less chaotic.

Almost everyone recognizes the brass bands and circuses of their dog’s communication. The dog who barks and lunges wants space. The dog who cringes and cowers is afraid. The dog who bounces through life like a rocking horse come to life is happy and relaxed. But what about the rumours? What about the quieter signals? What do they look like?

Freezing is a signal that most of us see but don’t see. It is a rumour so it is easy to disregard. Your dog sees something and he pauses, or freezes and most of the time, once he identifies what it is that he is looking at, he moves right on. The freeze is like a decision point. It is a point where the dog identifies something as relevant, but not necessarily as important. When we see this happening, we should take note. Fido freezes a lot because his world is pretty scary. Fluffy freezes rarely because she is much more confident, so when she freezes we should take note that something fairly important may be going on for her. Ralph freezes rarely because he doesn’t often stop to look at things; his response when the other two puppies would freeze is usually to bolt without thinking.

This puppy is yawning and looking away. He might be tired, but more likely he is fed up with what was most likely a long photo shoot to get him into position with the kitten. Yawning is a way that dogs have to show us that they are a little concerned, but it also happens when they are tired. Just like us!

Yawning and shaking off as though wet when they are dry are two other subtle signals that dogs use to show us that they are overwhelmed in one way or another. These are more of the rumour type of signals; they can fade into the background when you aren’t paying close attention. Fido does this a lot and it often gets disregarded because his people often think he might be tired. The dad in Fido’s family explained the shake off as Fido being dusty! Fluffy only yawns when she is tired or shakes off when she is wet. And Ralph is such a busy boy that his family hasn’t noticed him doing either behaviour. It is hard to observe a dog who is conspicuously absent.

One thing that we are often frustrated with as instructors is when a client says to us “but he does that all the time” when we try and share what we know about what dogs are saying through their behaviour. When you cannot read the rumours, you may not realize how often your dog is in distress. When we point this out to you, we don’t do that because we dislike you or your dog; we do so because we recognize that your dog is upset and we want to help. Dog body language is a long study; we will never be as good at reading it as the dogs are, but there are many good resources. A favourite is Barbara Handelman’s Canine Behaviour A Photo Illustrated Guide. You can find it at https://www.dogwise.com/canine-behavior-a-photo-illustrated-handbook/ . I helped to edit that, so I know that the images and text are well laid out and well explained. Another good resource is The Language of Dog DVD. You can also find that on Dogwise at https://www.dogwise.com/the-language-of-dogs-understanding-canine-body-language-and-other-communication-signals-dvd-set/ .

In the story that started me thinking about this blog, the message that a circus was coming to town started out as a whisper, a rumour. Then it was talked about a little bit. In the end, it was a big hairy deal. The handbills were printed and everyone went down to the train station to see the arrival. The whole town talked about the circus and a brass band was on hand to make sure that everyone knew that the circus had arrived. It is well worth spending some time learning more about what your dog is “saying” since he is going to be talking to you through his behaviour for the rest of his life. When we hear the whispers of what your dog wants to say to you, instead of depending upon the brass band level of message, we can often avert the circuses that ensue when the dog feels he needs to get the message across immediately. Your dog should not need a brass band to tell you when he is afraid, distressed or upset, and both your life and his will be much easier when you can address his issues quickly and efficiently because you heard the first rumours of what he is experiencing.

One of the many things I love to spend time on is a good puzzle. Word puzzles are a ton of fun! In particular, word morphs can keep my attention for hours. A word morph is a puzzle game where you are given a starting word, and an ending word, and you change one letter of the word at a time to come up with the end word. The challenge is to get from one word to another in the fewest number of steps. Often the words are somehow linked, such as cat to dog, or help to safe. Maybe it is these puzzles that really draw me to training using shaping.

Shaping is the process in training where we start with the dog doing something and change that something into something else through successive approximations. What that means is each training step brings the dog closer and closer to the end behaviour. As an example, let me describe teaching a dog to approach without jumping up, as I did with a client’s dog last night. This dog, a young exuberant labrador loves to rush up to people, and throw herself at people. At about 30 kg, this dog is big enough to really hurt someone if she chooses the wrong person to jump upon. This is like the starting word.

Training is a process of steps towards a goal. If you try and take too many steps at once, you will stumble and fall back down to the beginning. When you take the process of learning step by step by step, you go from can’t to can and success with your dog. Copyright: cristianbr / 123RF Stock Photo

The desired behaviour is to have her come up to me, and keep her feet on the floor while I touch her. In behaviour parlance, we would call this the target behaviour and I always like to break that behaviour down into the simplest terms possible. I don’t like to use more than 7 words to describe that behaviour because the more simply that I can describe it, the easier it is to find the steps to achieve my goal. Let’s call this behaviour “approach with 4 feet on the floor.” That is 6 words, so it fits my desire to have no more than 7 words to describe what I am training, but you will notice that it cuts out the touching part. By limiting myself to 7 words at most, I prevent myself from lumping too many things into one training session.

Now that I have the starting behaviour and the ending behaviour, the rest of the training session is a matter of inserting the intermediate steps. This part of shaping requires that I let go of the idea that I am going to run the entire training show without input from my training partner. It requires that I allow my learner to do what she wants without interference. During the training session she may do exactly what I don’t want, and for the purposes of this example I am just going to let her do that. I think that for some of my human students this is perhaps the hardest part of shaping. Most of my students whose dogs jump up are so deeply appalled by the undesired behaviour that when it happens they give the dog feedback that may or may not be helpful. Usually, the feedback they give the dog is just exactly something that will maintain or even strengthen the behaviour. Pushing the dog down may feel like a solution but in fact, teaches the dog that you are more than happy to play a vigorous wrestling game for instance and from the dog’s perspective, yelling is just noisy barking that humans do sometimes.

Here is how the session played out. We let the dog off leash in the training hall and she began to run around away from me. This is not an uncommon reaction when the dog is off leash, so the very first thing I did was to set the dog up so that she was unlikely to do the undesired behaviour. Setting up so that you get what you want is the hallmark of great training. After about three minutes, she approached me and her person, and I clicked my clicker and threw a treat behind her. I should mention that this dog understood what a clicker was and what it meant, so if you want to try this out, you should teach the dog that click means treat before you start.

When I clicked the clicker, the dog stopped dead in her tracks and stared at me. For her, this was probably the first time that she had received any feedback about approaching other than yelling or pushing! She was genuinely surprised at the outcome. I made sure she could see me throw the treat and she took off like a shot to chase the treat. Once she took the treat, she started to explore the training room again, sniffing the toys and finding dropped treats that had been left by previous trainers. It took her another two or three minutes to approach us and again she approached us at a run. I clicked again and threw another treat behind the dog. This time there was a short light bulb moment for the dog; approaching me was a safe, interesting thing to do, and it resulted in treats! From there the dog began to approach me right away after getting her treat. 7 clicks and treats later she was coming in towards us eagerly but under her own control. Throughout this time, I simply chatted with the client, never giving the dog directions, never micromanaging the dog, just clicking the dog for approaching, and throwing the treat away to get the dog to leave in order for me to set up a chance for the dog to return.

From that point forward, I wanted the dog to start to approach more closely while maintaining her self control. To get her to do this, I just delayed clicking until she approached more closely. About 10 more clicks and she was walking right up to me. I had a little bit of history with this dog, working with her on the down stay, so she made a quick leap of logic and without any prompting or cuing or other information from me, she approached me and lay down. I really liked that, so I clicked and threw several treats; I made approaching and lying down really, really valuable!

As I said at the beginning, shaping is a lot like a word morph game. In this case the steps were approach, approach and stop, approach under self control, approach more closely under self control, approach and lie down at my feet. You will notice that the learner added in something I had not planned for; lying down. If she had added in sit, or stand and make eye contact, that would have been fine with me too; in this case, it doesn’t matter to me what she did when she arrived as long as it wasn’t putting her feet on me. In five steps, I achieved my goal of “approach with four feet on the floor”.

This is what my goal behaviour looks like for the labrador retriever I was working with. Knowing what I want is an important part of shaping. If I don’t know where I am going, it is going to be much harder to take steps towards that goal. It is important to be able to form the goal behaviour in terms of what I do want, not just what I don’t want. Copyright: lightpoet / 123RF Stock Photo

In order to get my goal of being able to touch this dog, I would have continued to train, clicking and treating for approaching and lying down while I first stepped towards the dog, and then stepping in and reaching but not touching, then stepping in and touching her and finally stepping in, reaching, touching and stroking her. The important thing to notice in this case is that once the dog is doing what I want her to do, I am shaping the activity that happens around her while she is doing the behaviour that I want. This is an important next step in most training; trainers might call this proofing. What we mean is for the dog to continue to do the target behaviour no matter what else happens around them.

It is popular to only define shaping in terms of reinforcement training but in fact, shaping can happen in any of the four training quadrants; you can certainly use punishment to shape behaviour too. With this very same dog we did this to keep her safe after she jumped up on a treat station and broke it. We have small flower pots on the wall to hold treats, and like many dogs before her, she tried to jump up and use her claws to pull the pots off the wall. She broke a pot and it would be dangerous to her to continue to do this, so we didn’t want her to do that. When she jumped up on the wall near the pots, we called out “that’s enough”. If she stopped right away, we would toss treats for her to clean up. If she continued to the pot, we would call out “too bad” and then quietly and calmly catch her and put her in the classroom crate for a few minutes. Then we would let her out to try again. In this way, the dog learned that jumping up on the wall near the pots was a behaviour that would predict an outcome that she didn’t like very much. It wasn’t stressful for her, it was just something she didn’t like.

It took about five repetitions to teach the dog not to jump on the walls, but that was really only the first step; we really wanted this dog to stop fixating on the pots altogether, so the next step on this shaping protocol was to call out the warning as she approached the wall. This time she learned the game even more quickly; it took her three repetitions to decide that approaching the wall near the pot was not a desired behaviour. From there, almost half an hour passed before she tried the behaviour again. In this way, we had shaped the behaviour we wanted using a negative punishment protocol.

Shaping can work with extinction too. We use extinction to teach dogs not to snatch treats until they are told. Extinction is the process of doing nothing at all until the behaviour changes and then reinforce the lack of the behaviour. At first, we ask only that they not touch our hand when a treat is extended towards the dog. Then we require that they stay off the treat for a second. Then two seconds. Then three, five, seven, ten and so on until the dog learns that trying to get at the treat just won’t work. We essentially teach the dog to stop trying to get the treat for longer and longer periods of time.

The important thing to understand about morphing behaviours like changing words is to make changes slowly. If you want your dog to pay attention to you when there are other dogs in the vicinity, then don’t start in the middle of the dog park; start far away, and pay your dog for giving you his attention at whatever distance he is already successful. Some dogs struggle so much with attending to me out of doors that I start out with just hand feeding outside my front door. Then I take them to places in the car and just feed them in new places. In general, if I have a really distracted dog, I want them to take treats nicely in ten places before I start asking them to do anything at all in a new place. Then I start asking for things they will do at home on my front step or in the driveway. From there, I take them in the car and ask them to get out of the car and do something really easy. Each time, I pay really well for whatever the dog does what I ask. Just as teaching the dog a new skill requires that I increase the difficulty of the skill in a step wise manner, so does working in a new environment.

Just like changing words one letter at a time, shaping or morphing behaviours is a lot of fun. One of the biggest reasons it is a lot of fun is that if you are only changing a little bit at a time, you are going to be fairly successful in very short order. It is a lot less fun when you try and change more than one thing at a time. When you are training, if you are not succeeding, ask yourself if you are changing too much too fast and if you are, slow down and enjoy the success.

One of the platitudes we hear over and over and over again in dog training is that a tired puppy is a happy puppy. When I think about being tired, I think about that feeling of having lots to do and not enough time to get it done, of deadlines, of the desire to do more but the inability to do so. Or I think about the end of a work out, where I just want a shower and to be left alone. I don’t think about tired when I think about content.

Don’t get me wrong. Exercise is an important component of good health for both us and our dogs. Reasonable amounts of exercise that is. Yesterday I took my horse out to exercise her and she was very full of herself. We went to a new area to her, and I got out my longe line and asked her to walk in a circle around me. This is a very common way of exercising horses and my mare is very familiar with it. In a new place though she was very spooky and nervous and when a truck rumbled by and blew its horn she took off. She galloped around me for a solid ten minutes, and that was before we even got really organized. After her spook, I worked her in the other direction so that she would not get stiff on one side, and then I walked her for about twenty minutes to make sure she would be properly cooled out. With horses we have to be very careful about keeping them properly limbered and properly warmed up and cooled out and when a spook like this happens we often end up exercising a horse more than we would prefer. At the end of her work out, Kayak was very tired.

Today when I brought Kayak out for her daily work out, she was very subdued. She was loose and moving well, but she was obviously tired out from yesterday’s work-out. Today I worked her very lightly because although a tired horse can be an easier to handle horse, a tired horse is also a horse more prone to injuries. This is true of all athletes, horse, human and yes, dog.

Often when I talk to people about the behaviour problems they are having, an interesting pattern has developed for the dog. As a young pup, the people would see the puppy get the zoomies and thinking that their puppy needed an extra walk, they would take the puppy out for progressively longer walks. Very quickly, the zoomies move out of the realm of an emotional response to being over tired to an operant way to get more walks. It takes very little time for a dog to learn that racing around results in a walk.

As the puppy grows, so does his stamina and then next thing that often happens is that the puppy develops a lot of stamina. A young Australian Shepherd is perfectly able to run hard for most of the day, regardless of the effect on his future health. This is an active breed that was intended to move large numbers of sheep for hours on end. The race between stamina and the amount of exercise that a young dog can absorb becomes a vicious circle where the human gives the dog exercise, and then the dog is naughty and the human gives the dog more exercise. It is not just herding dogs like the Aussie either; I have seen this happen in spaniels, retrievers, and working breeds. If your dog comes from a genetic background where he needed to be active, then the more exercise you give him, the more exercise he seems to need. Furthermore, if you have been exercising your dog whenever he seems restless, you are inadvertently creating a dog who will need more and more and more exercise.

Attempting to exercise a dog into fatigue who was bred to do this for ten hours a day is an exercise in frustration for families, but likely also for their dogs. Copyright: <a href=’http://www.123rf.com/profile_kitzcorner’>kitzcorner / 123RF Stock Photo</a>

Often the next stop on the journey of exercise junkie is dog day care. There are great dog day cares out there, where the dogs have structured days that include rest periods and down time, but a great many dog day cares are one revolving door of activity, activity, activity. One of my clients came in after his dog was dismissed from daycare because he was aggressive to the other dogs. The daycare would not permit a video to be made to determine what exactly was going on, however from what we can determine, the dog would arrive around 7 am and more and more dogs would arrive until about 10 in the morning. As the dogs arrived they were permitted to race into the day care and plough into the play group. From ten till about two in the afternoon, these dogs would be a more or less stable group, but any time they settled down to rest, a staffer would go out and get them moving. At two in the afternoon, dogs would start going home. By five when my client would pick up his dog, his dog was exhausted. When we added this dog to our play group, it was really clear that he didn’t mind rough play at first, but over time, as he tired, he would begin to build a bigger and bigger space bubble around him. By keeping his play sessions short and not permitting him to play when he was tired we resolved a good chunk of this dog’s problem.

The allure of the dog coming home tired is very attractive to many owners of young dogs, but if the day care doesn’t make sure that the dog gets down time and rest time, then you can be contributing to a dog becoming an exercise junkie. This leaves us with two questions. The first is “How much is enough” and the second is “When should you exercise the dog”?

The answer to how much is enough is completely dependent on how much you think you can live with. If you cannot live with a dog who needs 5 hours of hard exercise a day, then don’t start building up your dog’s exercise tolerance to that level. I have a colleague in Sudbury who is extremely active with her dogs; she does sledding and hiking and biking with her dogs, and she could live with dogs who are able to tolerate five hours a day of hard exercise. This is not typical of my students though. If you cannot tolerate this level of exercise, then don’t get your dog up to that exercise.

When a dog starts exercising stressed, he is going to also be stressed during exercise at least for the first while. Look at this guys’ rounded eyes, pulled back ears and pulled in tongue.

There is a minimum though; dogs do best with at least an hour a day of off leash hiking with their people. Not all of us have the luxury of this, but that is likely the optimal for most dogs and it is doable for more folks, so as a middle of the road guide line, an hour a day off leash is a good amount of exercise. When you cannot give your dog this, you can substitute things like walking (not bounding!) up and down stairs, training games that involve searching for specific items or treats or learning new tasks.

The second question of when to exercise your dog is an interesting one. If you exercise your dog at the same time each and every day, you will create a situation where your dog anticipates exercise and becomes difficult to handle because of that. As the moment of exercise approaches, the dog becomes increasingly aroused and excited. If you then exercise your dog he will learn that being excited and aroused predicts a walk. When nothing else is going on, he will behave in an excited manner and then you will eventually respond by giving him that walk. Although you may be planning your walk at a specific time, your dog may begin to think that his excitement is what produces the walk instead of the other way around.

On the other hand, if you walk your dog more or less randomly, he will begin to tune into your subtle cues that a walk is coming and you have exactly the same issue that you might in the event that you walk your dog at the same time every day. Putting down your reading glasses and picking up your phone means that you are going to go for that greatly anticipated walk.

To avoid these common walk problems, there are a few things to do. First, understand that puppies under 12 weeks who zoom around like small jets are probably tired and need a nap, not another walk. When you see this behaviour, call your pup, put him in his crate with a kong or other appropriate chew and let him be for a while. After twelve weeks you can start to give your puppy more exercise and start to build towards a level of stamina you can live with, while meeting his minimum needs for exercise. If you have an older dog who has the pre-walk fidgets, use that as an indicator that you need to crate him till he settles down too. When the dog is settled, you can take him out if appropriate. We find that most young dogs conk out pretty quickly and take a nap. Older dogs can learn that being silly and excited in the crate does not open the door.

Once you have broken the cycle of being excited and aroused before the walk, establish a routine before your walk. Start out by teaching your dog to lie down. Lying down is a calm and controlled position. When your dog is down, feed him treats, one by one and then work on being able to move around the room, while he stays. If he breaks the stay, just re-cue him and work with him on staying in a down position for ten minutes. At about the ten minute point (sometimes 9, sometimes 10, or even 11 minutes), call your dog out of the down position and go get ready for your walk. Work up to being able to get ready for the walk while your dog is down. If he gets tense or excited (you will notice ears and eyes perking up), then keep working on the stay, continuously feeding as you move things around and get ready to go. When your dog is relaxed, actually calm, that is when walks will start.

This dog is ready to go for a walk. He is calm and he is showing us that his face and body are relaxed.

If you work on this regularly and reliably, then what you will get is a dog who is calm before walks. If you only walk your dog when he is aroused and excited then you are only going to have a dog who is aroused and excited, and that is not much fun to live with. A tired dog is a tired dog. A calm dog is usually a happy dog.

If I had a nickel for every time that someone said to me “Danish GutterHund, and you know they are like potato chips, you can’t just stop at one” I would be a moderately wealthy behaviour consultant. When I first got involved with dogs almost everyone I knew only had one dog, or maybe a dog and a cat and very few people had multi dog families. Now multiples seems to be more and more common. We had a family join us recently who have FIVE dogs and had just gotten another puppy. Increasingly I am being asked for help integrating the newest puppy into a multidog household.

I have lived with more than one dog for most of the past twenty years because when John and I moved in together, he had a dog and I had a dog. When his dog died, we had a brief period where we only had one dog, but we have almost always had two, and often had three or more dogs living full time with us. When we were raising service dog puppies, we integrated a new puppy into our home at least once a year, so we have this down to a bit of a science.

It is always a good idea to know what the rules are going to be before you bring home your puppy so that you can start showing him the rules before he starts to get into trouble. Copyright: Fotofront69 / 123RF Stock Photo

To start with decide on what the rules are. This is a good idea even if you are preparing for your first dog. It is much easier to teach your puppy what you want him to do if you have spent a little time ahead of time working out what the rules are going to be. In our house, dogs are not permitted on furniture, they are not permitted to rough house indoors, they are expected to sit before doors open and they can touch their toys but nothing else in our very messy house. When the resident animals know the rules, then it is much easier for the new animals to learn the rules.

From time to time I meet a very unruly adolescent dog and the owners tell me that in the past they had older resident dogs teach the youngster the ropes and they expected the current older dog to pass along the rules of the house to a puppy. While the adult dogs are helpful in modelling good behaviour in your home, they cannot be responsible for teaching the puppy what is expected. The older dogs and other pets don’t have thumbs and cannot open doors, operate the car or control any of the fun stuff that comes to young dogs who are well behaved.

When we bring a puppy home, he spends his first two months or until he outgrows our puppy crate in our kitchen. We live in a 160 year old farm house, and our kitchen has a door directly to the outside, making this a great place to toilet train puppies. We work strange hours and we tend to be up at about 8 in the morning and the first thing we do is clip a leash on the puppy and take him outside to toilet. Then he comes in and stays with us as we do our morning routines of making coffee, hitting the bathroom, cleaning teeth and so on. When we have the early morning basics underway, we hand feed the puppy a meal, usually as part of a training session. The adult dogs eat in their crates separately.

After the puppy eats his breakfast, we go outside again to toilet and sometimes if the weather is good to have some outdoor exploring and play time. We live rurally which means that there are lots and lots of outdoor rules to learn too. We want our pups to like our horses, but we don’t want them to harass the horses. We have electric fencing and eventually pups learn that they mustn’t touch that or they will get hurt. We also live near a busy highway so we have boundary training to do so that the dogs learn never to go across our driveway towards the unsafe road. If the weather doesn’t co operate we will play with the pups in the kitchen. We have a system that helps us to teach puppies what to do. We have a giant puppy toy box filled with everything a puppy could possibly want to play with. The pup is permitted free access to the toy box when he is loose. We also have dozens of shoes and boots and other household items that just hang out on the floor of our kitchen. When a puppy interacts with an item that is permitted he gets to keep playing. When he touches an item he may not we call out a warning signal; “that’s enough”. If the puppy stops immediately he gets to continue. If he continues to touch the forbidden items, then we say “too bad” and put him in his crate for a short period of time. After a few minutes, the puppy comes out and gets to try again..

Baby D’fer explores the adult dog water bowl. It was raised because we had an elderly dog who had difficulty dropping his head to drink. Notice that I am right beside him actively supervising what he is doing. Supervision is key to success with young dogs.

You may notice that so far I have not mentioned having the adult dogs interacting with the puppy. After the pup has had his morning play time, I allow the adult dogs up and the pup can see the adults through the crate and they can get to know him without being harassed by him. In our current home we have three adult dogs. One of our dogs, Eco is a great dog for interacting with puppies. He sets boundaries and shows them cool things. He gets time through the day to interact in a supervised way with the pups. Another of our dogs does not like puppies at all and he never gets to interact with them. Our third dog has not yet had a chance to help raise pups because she has so far been too young, but I am better that she will be terrific with them. Through the day, we provide opportunities for the puppy to interact with the adults in supervised structured ways, but we don’t just let the puppy loose with the adults without guidelines.

D’fer meets Bear for the first time. Notice that John is right in the middle of things. Bear didn’t like puppies and John allowed him to escape through his legs and kept his hand on D’fer so that he could not follow. When an adult dog tries to avoid a puppy, we support the adult dog; the puppy can learn some manners before he is required to put up with D’fer loose in the house. D’fer and Bear went on to become fast friends as D’fer matured into adulthood.

If you are integrating a puppy into a home with a cat, you can use the “That’s enough, too bad” system for harassing the cat or cats. I don’t expect puppies to cuddle up with cats until the are much older, so my early introductions are all about being polite to the cat and not playing roughly and setting a boundary and guidelines about what is and what is not acceptable behaviour related to the cat. You must decide ahead of time what you want this relationship to look like and if you have a cat who objects strongly to the dog, you must put the needs of the cat front and centre. Cats usually cope quite well if they have space to go and avoid the dog. Cat ladders, baby gates and hiding spots for the cat help a lot with the cat’s ability to relax in the company of the dog.

Most of my pups quickly learn that after breakfast is a time to chill out and relax, to settle and to rest. The busiest part of the day doesn’t come till late afternoon. After a morning nap, we repeat our early morning routine at noon, training through the puppy’s lunch. Adult dogs are in a different room when we train the puppy. With young pups, we teach a lot of self control activities such as the automatic leave it, waiting for the food bowl to drop and not touching it till told to, waiting at doors and not rushing through them, creating puppies who are mannerly and self controlled. Most of our pups also master sit, down, touch, come when called and go to mat by the time they are about sixteen weeks of age. After lunch, we may take the youngster out for a walk with one adult dog. We have found that walking a puppy in the company of multiple adult dogs is risky; adults get to running and racing and it would be a small thing for the puppy to be tripped on or trampled.

Puppies need naps, just like children do! When you cannot supervise, or if your puppy is tired or if you are between play times, a crate is a perfect place for a puppy to rest.

Our pups go back down for a nap in the afternoon and at about four pm we move our activities to the training hall. When we are at the training hall our pups are always crated in our kennel area where they can be safely contained and kept out of trouble. Our pups usually get into a class at least once a day, and this is where they have their third meal. By having our dogs at the training hall we are able to get them out to pee on a regular basis and they learn that there are behavioural expectations at work.

As our puppies learn the ropes, they get more time out of their crates and doing things and gradually they spend more time both in the house and outside with our adult dogs. When the pups go through periods of testing the boundaries, we back up and give them fewer freedoms. We really feel it is important not to allow our puppies out of our sight until they are about sixteen weeks of age. At that point they start getting more house time as long as they are not making mistakes such as getting on furniture, stealing items that don’t belong to them or playing roughly in the house. At about sixteen weeks, we start adding pups into play groups in our yard. We are fortunate to have a yard attached to our farm house and with multiple dogs we find that it is important to give each dog some time with us alone. This time each day means that the dogs are more bonded to us than to one another, which makes training easier. In our house, adolescent and adult dogs get time in the yard with one another, and time in the house with us, both alone and with the other dogs.

It is also important to keep in mind that your adult dogs didn’t sign up for a puppy and they will need time alone with you. This is where having a crate in the kitchen where we spend the bulk of our time can be really helpful. We can have the adult dogs out with us, and the puppy can learn about the adults in a safe way, but the adults don’t have to put up with a rude puppy who might interrupt time with me. Puppies in our house also learn that it is not always their turn and that if they start to fuss in their crates then everyone will just leave the kitchen.

Bear was never impressed with having puppies around. Generally Crow (the German Shepherd) liked puppies, but he did not like change and the first few days home with a new pup were always difficult for him.

Integrating a new puppy into your home is really a matter of deciding what you want and teaching your puppy the rules. Young pups need lots of supervision and when we cannot give it to them, using a crate is a great way to keep your puppy safe. Not everyone has the luxury that we do of being available for our pups all day long, so sometimes we have to work around other constraints. Many families arrange to come home at lunch time to let their puppies out and then leave again for the afternoon while their pups nap. Sometimes a good strategy is to get a dog walker who can come in and let the pup out while you are away. Whatever your schedule is, working around keeping everyone relaxed and happy depends on knowing what you want ahead of time, and then implementing a plan to meet the needs of your household.

One of the important things that I do when I work with any dog is to include him in my daily routine. My dog isn’t just an inhabitant of my home; he is my partner in pretty much everything I do. This morning for instance, I included Eco in my ironing; I am working on a craft project that requires ironing, and so when I got the iron and ironing board out, I included Eco in the activity. How might that look? It probably doesn’t look very interesting, but when I opened the closet door, Eco poked his head in and then when I reached for the iron and board, I asked him to back up and he backed out of my way. While I was setting it all up, I asked him to lie down and pointed to where I wanted him to go. I didn’t ask him to stay so when I go out the fabric that I wanted to iron, he got up and took a look at what I had in my hand. When I asked him to go back and lie down, he did. After I was done ironing, I needed to get access to my craft table and he was in the way, so I was able to ask him to change his resting place to another point across the room. When I was done with that part of my project, I need to go downstairs to get some water for the steamer in the iron and I asked Eco to heel beside me down the stairs, which he did. We worked together to get the task done. Was it strictly necessary to have 48kg of black carnivore supervising my activities? Did he contribute? Not really. But we do things together and this morning I was ironing.

This is the kind of help I like to see dogs giving! The dog is obviously part of the activity, and engaged with what is happening but also has the skills to participate in a way that is not going to interfere with the activity progressing. This is what results when you have a good training relationship with your dog! Copyright: halfpoint / 123RF Stock Photo

Sometimes I do things he likes; when I take my daily morning walk, for instance, I throw his feed pan. As a big strong dog, he needed a big strong toy and the thing that worked best for him was a rubber livestock feed pan. It makes a lousy frisbee but he likes it, and he will bring it to me and suggest that I throw it for him. On a good day I can throw it about 20 metres. He includes me in his games and activities because although he doesn’t need a great big primate to amuse him, it is part of how he and I relate.

The bottom line for me is that we share our activities with one another and we each bring skills to the table that the other can ask for and respond to. This is the gift that good reciprocal training gives to me. When Eco was a baby, I did more things that he found interesting than things that I found interesting with him. I spent many hours sitting on the floor playing tug and touch, fetch and search games. As we got to know one another, I began to teach him the words for the behaviours I wanted him to do. This in my opinion is the best kind of teaching to do with a puppy; I didn’t spend so much time at that age formally asking for or prompting sit or down, but sometimes in the course of our interactions, if he offered me a behaviour I was interested in keeping, I might respond by naming the behaviour and then playing a game that Eco wanted to play. It didn’t take long for him to figure out that the names for the behaviours corresponded to what he was doing and that if he did them when I asked, I might do something he would find enjoyable.

A sad tale for me is the story of so many dogs who are not really “one of the gang”. Many of these dogs are well loved and well cared for, but they are not yet partners with their people. The people and their dogs share space and activities in parallel instead of in partnership. The thing to understand about partnership is that it is a two way street, and deep partnership involves more than simply co-habitating and ensuring that your dog has enough to eat and drink. Deep partnership means that we should be aware of one another and respond to one another in a meaningful way. That is probably the biggest reason that I train my dog.

Informal training sessions with puppies where I engage with what the pup is interested in doing provides me with the best opportunity to teach my puppy about what being my partner is all about! We do things that the pup likes, such as tugging, and when the puppy does what we like, we name it and continue playing. Activities that set up opportunities to trade desired behaviours like sit for tug, set the puppy up to look to us for information about what is happening and being a good partner. Copyright: inspirestock / 123RF Stock Photo

Dog training is the way that I develop a language to use when I am talking to my dog. I do a lot of informal training when I include my dog in my daily activities, but I also need to develop a language that we can share to do more complex things together. If I want to take my dog into the bush and go camping with me, I need him to be able to come when called, lie down and stay off leash, go around obstacles or over them as is necessary and I need him to connect with me so that if there is a challenge we can overcome it together. This is where teaching my dog in a formal setting can really jumpstart what we do together. Sometimes exercises in a class can seem disconnected from what we do informally, but if you start to look for opportunities to incorporate your formal training into your daily life, you not only improve your dog’s overall performance in those exercises, at the same time that you create a better bond with your dog.

If you go back to my ironing exercise, consider all the times when my formal training was integrated into that informal activity. The behaviours that I used during my ironing included backing up on cue, lying down, going to place, moving from one place to another place and heeling so he wouldn’t trip me on the stairs. These are all behaviours that I taught formally in obedience classes. I think that it is interesting that when I use behaviours in context I rarely need reinforcers to maintain them. If my canine partner thinks he is doing something important to both of us, he rarely asks to be paid to work, and I think this is an important clue to successful training. When your dog feels that they are an important part of what you are doing, they are often willing to participate in the activity, and if they have learned the skills to participate, reinforcement is rarely needed.

IF YOU DON’T HAVE TIME TO DO IT RIGHT….when will you have time to fix it?

On Facebook recently a colleague brought up the issue of behaviour clients who when asked why they didn’t go to puppy class respond that they didn’t have time. We hear this regularly. Families get a puppy and then don’t have time for class, don’t have time to train, don’t have time to exercise and then they come to us when the puppy is about 8 months old and tell us that the dog is now a nuisance. Further these clients often tell us that they have limited time and resources to fix their issues.

Everywhere I go, I hear about the pressures of time, and how often we spend time doing things such as surfing Facebook and Twitter or doing things that are empty time fillers. I hear about how fast paced life is and how much we each have to do in such a busy society. Apparently the time saving devices such as laundry and dishwashing machines, computers, faxes and phones have in fact created situations where we have so much more to do in our lives that we are busier than ever. In the face of the pressures of busyness at work, social commitments and activities, exercise demands and the pull and push of taking care of ourselves, our family and our community commitments, then when you get a puppy, he can fall between the cracks of other demands on our time.

The telephone and the computer have all been promoted as labour saving devices, and yet often they are just adding to the amount that we try and do! Your puppy needs your actual attention and he will learn quickly if you are not paying attention to him. Copyright: stockbroker / 123RF Stock Photo

I would like to suggest that a puppy, in all of his frenetic and exciting behaviours is an invitation to slow down for a while. To put aside the busy in your life and take the time to do it right. It doesn’t mean that you have to radically change everything you do, but it does invite some reflection on how we structure our lives around change. What you do in the first 8 to ten weeks that you have a puppy will impact the rest of his or her life. Think about that for a minute. If you get a puppy, and you don’t have time to do it right in those first 8 to ten weeks, when will you have time to fix that?

Getting a puppy can be an expensive proposition in terms of money but also in terms of time. We often hear from new puppy families that they are surprised at the costs they are facing both in terms of money and time, so if you can, it is wise to prepare ahead of time. Before a puppy comes home, carve out the time you will need to spend to help that pup develop to the fullest potential. In our experience, a new puppy requires about three hours a day most days, and five hours a day every day you go to puppy class in order to be successful. Luckily those hours don’t all fall consecutively or we would not get anything done!

In the morning, right off the start, we spend about twenty minutes toileting and feeding our pups. Later in the morning we spend half an hour to 40 minutes with the pup. We repeat this at lunch and dinner and then there are a couple of hours in the evening where the pup spends time with us; we don’t count this as time we have to carve out because we are integrating the puppy into what we do instead of carving time out for things that prevent us from doing what we would normally do.

On class days we have to do all that we normally do plus drive to class, participate in class and then drive home. Sometimes we also carve out time for play dates or to invite guests over to meet the puppy, so three hours is an estimate of a normal day, not a day where we do extras. As the puppy gets older, we shift our interactions with our pups so that they are integrated more and more into our lives, but it is important to recognize that having an adult dog is still going to take an hour out of your day each day to do things like feed, water, and exercise your dog.

Making time for your pup and your kids, without the pressure of busyness is healthy for everyone and helps to raise your pup to be who he has the potential to be! Copyright: ilona75 / 123RF Stock Photo

If you don’t have three hours a day to devote to getting a puppy, plus a couple of hours each week to take him to puppy class wait to get a dog until you have that time. Far too often what we see are nice families who want a puppy and who get one and initially spend 6 to 8 hours a day on the pup and then drop that down to an hour a day after the first three days. Sadly you cannot pack all that a puppy needs into the first three days! Slow and steady wins the race when it comes to raising a successful puppy! On the first day home, I like things to be quiet and calm for the pup. I like things to be low key so that the pup can quietly get accustomed to living in a new home with new routines and rules. When bringing home a puppy is a big to do, a party and an intense activity, and then you don’t follow that up with the day in and day out needs of the pup for structure, supervision and training, there is terrific potential for fallout.

Puppies are a lot like human toddlers. They need guidance and help to understand the world they are learning about. When toddlers are neglected, we know that grade one is much harder for them. When toddlers don’t get their basic needs for play and social interaction with children their own age, they struggle later with making friends when they go out in the world. This is where taking the time to do it right when your dog is under 16 weeks can really matter. If you don’t teach your puppy when he is young what you want him to know then when he inevitably develops problems then solving them is going to require more time and effort than preventing them.

I personally don’t enjoy the puppy phase very much. Cute just doesn’t motivate me! Never the less, when we have a puppy I take the time out of my day and I do the work that is needed to ensure that my pup will grow up to fulfill the potential he deserves. If I don’t have time to meet the puppy’s needs means that I don’t get that particular puppy. Something I think people sometimes forget is that puppies are always going to be available, but not every time that I want a pup will I have the time to meet his needs. If I don’t have time to do it right, I keep in mind that I likely won’t have time to fix whatever problems develop later.

Getting a puppy is a time where you can reflect on the fact that in our busy lives, there is value in carving out that time to slow down and do the job right from the start. Enrol in puppy class. Give yourself a few extra minutes to meet your pup’s needs. Turn off the TV, the Wi, the Xbox, the net and take that time and repurpose it to meeting the needs of the new life you are bringing into your home. The time you take and give to your pup now will mean a world of difference to his life with you forever. If you don’t have the time to do it right, plan on the time you will need to fix it.

Originally posted Tuesday, May 14, 2013

I often encounter people in the general public who are interested in having a well behaved dog but they don’t want to come to class. I also encounter colleagues on a regular basis who are professional trainers who still pay to take their dogs to classes. Why is there such a disparity? Could it be how people see dog training?

The main reason that people come to my classes in my experience is that they are having a problem of some sort. Really, that is too bad. That is kind of like only going grocery shopping when you are out of food and hungry. You don’t always make great choices then; often you are so hungry and annoyed that you grab the first thing that appeals to you and you forget all about your goals and objectives when eating healthy home cooked food.

Ideally, you would plan what you want to eat before you got hungry and before you went to the grocery store, and you would only buy things that you actually want to eat. Having a dog should be a little bit like that; you should start out with goals in mind and then decide how you want to achieve those goals, and include a training class and a trainer in the planning process. I love when clients call me BEFORE they get their pups and talk to me about their plans for training. It is a lot like making a very exciting grocery list.

There are several reasons that I personally have for training my dog. To begin with, I can avoid a lot of problems by training my dog what I want him to do instead of going back later and fixing problems that have developed. One of the first things I like teaching puppies is to keep four paws on the floor when they are greeting. It is so easy to do with a young pup and it is so much fun. Far better to teach a puppy what you want him to do instead of what you want him to stop doing after he has practiced and gotten really good at the behaviour I don’t like.

This young puppy is learning that having his collar grabbed is fun and that kids bring good things in an early puppy class.

I can also change behaviours that I don’t like and make them into behaviours I do like. I had one dog who would greet people by bouncing at about nose height. He never put his feet on you, but he sure did like to see you up close and personal. That drove many of us a little crazy. It was a behaviour we worked on often till he was about two and gave it up. I want to be clear; he didn’t out grow it-we changed it. We morphed his lovely bounce and turned it into a flying swing finish. Very snazzy! This taught him a behaviour that could earn him treats and toys and because we asked for it in a number of different contexts while teaching him to do other things when he met people, he developed the skills we wanted him to instead of continuing an annoying behaviour.

The third reason I train my dogs and go to training classes is that it is a ton of fun. Every week, or in my case, every day, I get to go and meet people I like and work at an activity with my dog that we both enjoy. Often I hear people complain that they wish that there was a place they could bring their dogs and do things with them; well there is! Training class is just about the only place I know of that is designed to permit you to bring your dog and do stuff with him. My dogs have tried a wide variety of sports from obedience and rally to tracking and protection. Structured activities that I can do with my dog are held several times a day and they are designed to help me have more fun with my dog. If you are going to a training class and the goal seems to be to see who can make you feel the most miserable about what you are doing with your dog, then you really need to re-examine what you are doing and why. There are tons of people friendly classes out there and if your class isn’t making you happy, then look for another one.

Tugging with rules is safe and fun for people and dogs and we do this in our Levels Classes on a regular basis!

Training acts as a form of communication with your dog. You develop a language that helps your dog to understand what you want and you to understand when your dog needs something. You can even teach your dog a basic language to express his needs. Teach a dog to ring a bell and then ask him to do it before you take him out to toilet and it doesn’t take long for most dogs to learn to ask to go out in a polite socially acceptable manner. Teach your dog that barking will result in a trip to his crate for a period of time and it doesn’t take long for your dog to stop asking to be separated from the family. When your dog understands both what you mean when you ask him to do something and the consequences, both desired and undesired of his behaviour.

There is a saying in the music world that “perfect practice makes perfect performance” and it is equally true in dog training. When you go to training classes you get a second set of eyes to look at what you are doing and help you to practice as perfectly as possible. Little things count. Things like how you hold your leash, or where you present your treats or how you use your body are things that you might not notice, so in order to get perfect practice, you need feedback from someone who can watch you. When I am getting ready to compete in obedience or rally I always book a lesson with my coach to clean up any handling details; if it is good for the professionals, why not for the amateurs too? I think that having a coach in a class is one of the best reasons to come to a training class.

If you have never been to a training class, perhaps you don’t know about the wide variety of classes available. There are puppy classes for dogs under 16 weeks; if you start later than 16 weeks, you are heading into adolescence so you are not going to puppy class any longer. Lately we have been seeing a variety of classes popping up for puppies; pre-sport classes for people who want to try a dog sport and work on the skills necessary to develop a great sports dog. We also see early puppy classes such as our Every Puppy Deserves Puppy Class that is designed solely for dogs under the age of 12 weeks. Some schools are offering senior puppy classes for dogs between 16 and thirty weeks-they are very popular.

Puppy class! Organized chaos and loads of fun for puppies and people.

For adults we have family obedience classes that focus on the skills needed for a family pet; sitting, lying down and staying; going to place, coming when called and walking on a loose leash are behaviours that are often covered in these classes. Schools are now offering classes and workshops that focus exclusively on specific behaviours that people are interested in. We offer two workshops like this; one called Loose leash which is a full day about leash manners and one called Instant Recall which is all about coming when called. Family dog classes are really important in order to help develop behaviours that make dogs into better canine citizens. A well trained family dog is a joy to take to the local soccer game or family picnic.

Leash skills workshops are becoming very common for people who want to learn a very specific skill.

There are also all kinds of sports classes for dogs; obedience is a formal sport much like ballroom dancing; it is precise and choreographed (no music mind you!) where teams of people and their dogs compete against one another to determine who is the most accurate to the test with their dogs. There is an offshoot competition called Rally Obedience which consists of a series of exercises set into a course that you follow and you compete on accuracy and time. Both sports can be a ton of fun, especially if you have someone to practice with and later compete with.

Agility is a well known sport that is great for building connection and responsiveness to you. I find that a lot of people want to try agility but few people understand the degree of commitment that it takes to be successful. Teaching the equipment is easy; you can teach most dogs all the equipment in less than a day. What you cannot do is teach accuracy, speed, responsiveness and handling in a day; that is what takes time and effort and that is what attracts so many people to the sport; the intricacies of the training.

D’fer works on targetting the yellow part of the teeter in agility. Agility is loads of fun and can require a very high level of training with lots of dedication that yeilds a great connection and responsiveness!

There is also flyball, Treibball, tracking, herding, carting, protection, nose work, and recreational search and rescue. The advantage of training for sports is that you have a goal to achieve with your dog. You also get to meet cool dog people, and learn more about yourself, your dog, how to change behaviour and what dog body language means. Top that off with internet chat groups, facebook pages and endless blogs about your favourite sports and you can fill every hour of the day with dog sport information.

Eco and I loved playing treibball!

Finally there are courses, seminars and workshops dedicated to work that your dog can do such as assisting you with a disability or delivering therapy programs. These programs focus on the manners your dog needs to have in order to visit public places that dogs don’t normally attend. These courses address issues such as leaving items that they come across on the floor, keeping their leashes loose, staying in one place for long periods of time and allowing everyone to handle them with dignity and calm.

If you have a dog and you have not taken a training class I challenge you to give one a try. Most of us in the training business love to help people to learn about our passion and we are interested in learning about your goals for your dog and helping you get there. And if you have taken a class but you aren’t taking one at the moment, consider revisiting class and trying something new. There is nothing I can recommend more highly to make your relationship with your dog better, while having a great time.